Egan Cassidy's Kid

“I’ve contacted all his friends and even talked to Mr. Wellborn, the school principal. Although I dropped him at school this morning—early—for a student council meeting, he never arrived. No one has seen him all day. Oh, God, Paul…help me.”

“Are you at home or at the shop?”

“I’m still downtown at the shop.”

“Stay where you are. I’ll be right over. As soon as you fill out the N.C.I.C form, we’ll get it entered into the computer. But I’ll go ahead and have a couple of men start checking around to see what they can find.”

“Thank you.” The receiver dangled from Maggie’s fingers. Every nerve in her body screamed. This couldn’t be happening. Not to her child. Not to Bent, the boy she loved more than life itself.

Janice took the telephone from Maggie and returned the receiver to its cradle, then she wrapped her arms around her best friend. Maggie hugged Janice fiercely as she tried to control her frazzled emotions. This was a parent’s worst nightmare. A missing child. She kept picturing Bent hurt and alone, crying for help. Then that scenario passed from her mind and another quickly took its place. Bent kidnapped and abused—perhaps even killed.

Maggie clenched her teeth tightly in an effort not to scream aloud.

Egan Cassidy poured himself a glass of Grand cru Chablis as he watched the salmon steak sizzling on the indoor grill. As a general rule, he dined alone, as he did tonight. Occasionally he had beer and a sandwich at a local bar with another Dundee agent. And once in a blue moon he actually took a woman out to dinner. But as he grew older, he found his penchant for solitude strengthening.

He liked most of his fellow Dundee agents, but except for two or three, they were younger than he. Perhaps the age difference was the reason he had very little in common with most of the other employees of the premiere private security and investigation firm in the Southeast, some said in the entire United States.

And as for the ladies—he’d never been a womanizer, not even in his youth. There had been special women, of course, and a few minor flirtations. But it had been years since he’d dated anyone on a regular basis. He had found that most of the women close to his age, those within a ten-year-span older or younger, were often bitter from a divorce or desperate because they’d never married. And he found younger women, especially those in their twenties, a breed unto themselves. Whenever he dated a woman under thirty, he somehow felt as if he were dating his daughter’s best friend. Of course, he didn’t have a daughter, but the fact was that at the ripe old age of forty-seven he easily could have a twenty-five-year-old daughter.

Egan turned the salmon steak out onto a plate, then carried the plate and the wine to the table in his kitchen. Although the kitchen in his Atlanta home was ultramodern, his table and chairs were antiques that he’d brought here from his apartment in Memphis. Over the years, while he’d traveled the world as a soldier of fortune, he had always returned to the States, so he’d maintained a place in his old hometown. But two years ago, after joining the Dundee Agency, he’d bought a home in Atlanta and moved his furniture, many priceless antiques, into his newly purchased two-story town house.

The salmon flaked to the touch of his fork and melted like butter when he put it into his mouth. He ate slowly, savoring every bite. He enjoyed cooking and had found that he was a rather good chef.

Egan poured himself more Chablis, then stood, picked up the bowl of fresh raspberries on the counter and headed for the living room. He could clean up later, before bedtime, he thought. As he entered the twenty-by-twenty room, he punched a button on the CD player and the strains of the incomparable Stan Getz’s saxophone rendition of “Body and Soul” filled the room. The stereo system he and his friend and fellow Dundee agent, Hunter Whitelaw, had installed was state-of-the-art. The best money could buy. Everything Egan owned was the best.

Easing down into the soft, lush leather chair, he sighed and closed his eyes, savoring the good music as he had savored the good food. Maybe growing up on the mean streets of Memphis, with no one except an alcoholic father for family, had whetted Egan’s appetite for the good things in life. And maybe his lack of a decent upbringing and his brief tenure in Vietnam when he’d been barely eighteen had predisposed him for the occupation to which he had devoted himself for twenty-five years. He’d made a lot of money as a mercenary and had invested wisely, turning his ill-gained earnings into quite a tidy sum. He had more than enough money, so if he chose to never work again, he could maintain his current lifestyle as long as he lived.

Two hours later, the kitchen cleaned and the bottle of Chablis half-empty, Egan made his way into his small home office. The bookshelves and furniture were a light oak and the walls a soft cream. The only color in the room was the dark green, tufted-back leather chair behind his desk. This was the one room in the town house that his decorator hadn’t touched. He smiled when he remembered Heather Sims. She’d been interested—very interested. And if he had chosen to pursue a relationship with her, she would have been only too happy to have filled his lonely hours with idle chitchat and hot sex. Three dates, one night of vigorous lovemaking and they had parted as friends.

Egan sat, then opened his notebook and picked up a pen. No one knew that he wrote poetry. Not that he was ashamed, just that to him it was such a private endeavor. At first, it had been a catharsis, and perhaps even now it still was.

With pen in hand, he wrote.

because he was eighteen

he was considered

man enough to fight old men’s wars…

The ringing telephone jarred him from his memories, from a time long ago when he’d lived a nightmare—a boy trapped in the politicians’ war, a boy who became a man the hard way.

Egan lifted the receiver. “Cassidy here.”

“Well, well, well. Hello, old friend.”

Egan’s blood ran cold. He hadn’t heard that voice in years. The last time he’d run into Grant Cullen, they’d both been in the Middle East, both doing nasty little jobs for nasty little men. When had that been, six years ago? No, more like eight.

“What do you want, Cullen?”

“Now, is that any way to talk to an old friend?”

“We were never friends.”

Cullen laughed and the sound of his laughter chilled Egan to the bone. Something was wrong. Bad wrong. His gut instincts warned him that this phone call meant big trouble.

“You’re right,” Grant Cullen agreed. “Neither of us has ever had many friends, have we?”

Cullen was playing some sort of game, Egan thought, and he was enjoying himself too damn much. “You want something. What is it?”

“Oh, just to talk over old times. You know, reminisce about the good old days. Discuss how you screwed me over in Nam and how I’ve been waiting nearly thirty years to return the favor.”

“You want me, you know where to find me,” Egan said, his voice deadly soft.

“Oh, I want you all right, but I want you to come to me.”

“Now why the hell would I do that?”

“Because I’ve got something that belongs to you. Something you’ll want back.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Egan clutched the phone tightly, his knuckles whitening from the strength of his grasp.

“Remember Bentley Tyson III, that good ol’ boy from Alabama who saved your life back in Nam?”

“How the hell do you know about Bentley?”

“You’ve been paying for flowers to be put on his grave every year ever since he killed himself fifteen years ago.”

“Get to the point,” Egan snapped, highly agitated that a man like Cullen would even dare to say Bentley’s name. Bentley, who’d been a good man destroyed by an evil war.

“The point is I know that when you paid your condolences to Tyson’s little sister fifteen years ago, you stayed in Parsons City for a week. What were you doing, Cassidy, screwing Maggie Tyson?”

Egan saw red. Figuratively and literally. Rage boiled inside him like lava on the verge of erupting from a volcano. How did Cullen know about Maggie, about the fact that he’d spent a week in her home?

He’s guessing about the affair you had with her, Egan assured himself. He wants to think Maggie meant something to you, that she still does.

“I don’t know where you got your information,” Egan said. “But you’ve got it all wrong. Bentley’s little sister was engaged to a guy named Gil Douglas and they got married a few months after Bentley’s funeral.”

“Oh, I know sweet Maggie was engaged, but she didn’t marry Gil Douglas until five years later. What Maggie did a few months after Bentley’s funeral—nine months to be exact—was give birth to a bouncing baby boy.”

Egan felt as if he’d been hit in the belly with a sledgehammer. His heartbeat drummed in his ears. He broke out in a cold sweat. No, God, please, no! He’d spent his entire adult life looking over his shoulder, waiting for Grant Cullen to attack. He had denied himself the love and companionship of a wife and the pride and joy of children to protect them from the revenge Cullen would be sure to wreak on anyone who meant a damn thing to Egan.

“What’s the matter, buddy boy, didn’t sweet Maggie tell you that you have a son?”

“You’re crazy! I don’t have a son.” He couldn’t have a child. God wouldn’t be that cruel.

“Oh, yes, you do. A fine boy of fourteen. Big, tall, handsome. Looks a whole hell of a lot like you did when you were eighteen and you and I were buddies in that POW camp.”

“I do not have a son,” Egan repeated.